What could be better than a catchy, snotty, punk-rock song about getting rid of your no-good boyfriend or girlfriend? An entire album’s worth of catchy, snotty punk-rock songs about getting rid of your no-good boyfriend or girlfriend. That’s what the Decals deliver on their CD debut, Drive-By Kiss Off (Fork in Hand). It’s a concept album whose concept is summed up near the end of the album when Michelle Paulhus and Nicole Johnson belt out a satisfying "Fuck you!" And they spend most of this raucous, rapid-fire disc (10 songs, 28 minutes) coming up with other good ways to say the same thing.

"I’ve really tried not to write any more mean songs," singer/bassist Paulhus explains. "For instance, I tried to write a song about going out and getting drunk. Then I started thinking, ‘Well, why am I going out and getting drunk?’ So I came out with another mean song." It’s a Sunday afternoon at the Abbey in Somerville; the band are chilling out before a radio interview, and everybody in the joint — where the Decals have played every few weeks for the past year — seems to be lining up to buy the two frontwomen a beer. "It feels like Cheers in here," notes Johnson. "Our biggest groupies are Abbey regulars."

That’s the Decals as Boston, or at least Somerville, has come to know them: the band to get drunk and cut loose along with. But lately it appears they may be growing up just a little. At last spring’s WBCN Rumble, they turned down all drink offers and played their set stone-cold sober, sounding the tightest they ever have. (They made it to the semis, won enough money to make their CD, and cheered when Cracktorch shut them down.) They also showed enough discipline to produce their CD themselves (with engineering help from former Moving Targets member Patrick Leonard), no small feat for a debut. It sports a sharp old-school approach, with Craig Adams and ex-Freeze member Gino Zanetti providing a Ramonesy guitar/drum sound. And the two frontwomen have learned to do better vocal interplay, matching Johnson’s sweeter voice with Paulhus’s nastier one.

So is it time for the Decals to get serious? Naah. "We just hope to get better at what we already do," notes guitarist Adams. "Just songs with a rockin’ upbeat feel and a nice hook for the chorus. Most of the record was done live; it took us six months to write the songs and six minutes to record ’em."

"We’ve always tried not to get too loaded when we play, especially now that we have a fan base that isn’t already our friends," Johnson adds. "At the Abbey it’s different, because we’re not afraid of fucking up in front of people we know." They do hope, however, that the CD can expand their fan base beyond the long-time local scenesters who discovered the Decals when Paulhus put in a year as the bassist of the Real Kids (she quit last Christmas when she couldn’t leave her day job for a tour). "Fork in Hand is a great label for us, because they work with a lot of punk and ska bands," she explains. "The average age of their bands is about 22, so I think that makes us the oldest band on the label."

From the sound of things, the two frontwomen have enjoyed relationships with especially lame boyfriends. Case in point: "If I Ever See You Again" ("You stole all my records, and my stereo too/You took my TV, and now I’ve got nothin’ to do"). Johnson claims, "I’m not bitching about anybody in particular — it’s more like I’m using one person as the role model for all bad guys." Paulhus, however, says she did have someone specific in mind. "The person I’ve written a lot of the songs about has seen us a few times, but he’s too stupid to figure it out."

"Gino and I both feel that men can be helpful life partners to women, so we try to set a good example," Adams deadpans when asked for the male perspective. "We’re trying to start writing hate songs and start writing about drug addicts, except that we hate them, too." So who would be the Decals’ ideal audience? "We get a few stalker types," says Paulhus. "Plus a bunch of young girls from Mass Art . . . "

". . . Who we especially try to encourage," Zanetti chimes in. But even the kind of guys they sing about seem to like the Decals just fine. "I think they secretly like the fact that we don’t write wimpy songs," says Paulhus. Look for the Decals this Saturday, November 10, at T.T. the Bear’s Place, with Ad Frank, Sugarbomb, and Frigate.

THERE WAS A TIME when you had to work hard to hear Mona Elliott’s voice. Her first band, Spore, which she joined as a teenager, followed the classic formula of "everything louder than everything else." Three band members sang and two played lead guitar, usually all at the same time. If you could penetrate the fearsome wall of noise, you’d discover that Elliott’s voice embodied the band’s emotional core, bespeaking a world-weariness and a certain come-hither quality that were well beyond her years.

That voice comes to the forefront in her current outfit, Victory at Sea; and it carries most of the weight on the band’s excellent second album, Carousel (originally released on the Virginia-based Slowdime label earlier this year, and just reissued on Kimchee). As usual in this band, the arrangements are kept down to basics: Elliott leaves plenty of open spaces in her lead guitar and Mel Lederman plays quietly pulsing bass parts, so the drums often become the lead instrument by default. Like his predecessor, Christine Files, who now plays with Mary Timony, Fin Moore tends to unleash a burst of polyrhythms just when you’re expecting to hear a guitar solo instead.

All of which, along with Andy Hong’s spare production, gives Elliott the space to open up and emote. At times on Carousel her vocals suggest the dark cabaret quality of a Thalia Zedek; at others she does a full-throated wail that brings Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker to mind. The songs often have a confessional feel, alluding to romantic break-ups and family breakdowns. The disc’s six-minute centerpiece, "The Blizzard of ’78," works wonders with a simple guitar lick and a small narrative. It’s the hurt in Elliott’s voice as she recalls an essentially happy time — along with ominous lines like "It was the last time I remember us together" — that makes the song so haunting.

"That was one of my fondest childhood memories — taking two weeks off from school and running around getting stuck in the snow," she notes from a tour bus as it rolls through Baltimore. "I really expected this to be a happy record; in fact, I was surprised when I listened back and realized it was still pretty depressing. The songs relate to things I’ve gone through — the carousel idea comes from the cycles of life and people moving in and out. That goes along with the [cover] photo, which is an old carousel somewhere in Kansas. We’ve never seen it in the flesh; it came from a book of carousel images that I have, and it looked pretty haunting.

"I’ve probably written some fun songs, but I guess my heart is really into purging — it helps me a lot to do that. Sometimes things take a long while to build up, but they do. As I get older, I find that I’m dealing with feelings a little better, getting more comfortable. I had a blast in Spore, but I was so young and everything felt so crazy and hectic." Do the up-front vocals on Carousel reflect a greater degree of self-confidence? Well, maybe. I definitely have more freedom to sing what I want to and where, and maybe the production puts it more up front. I just figured if I’m going through all this trouble, you might as well be able to hear it."

It’s been a transitional year for the band, what with the new drummer and a few shifts in Elliott’s musical taste (lately she’s been checking out Django Reinhardt and Serge Gainsbourg). "A lot of people are hearing a world of difference when they see us live, and I’m going back and forth on it myself. The songs are still coming from the same place." When the band hit T.T. the Bear’s Place last weekend, they were just back from a national tour that had lasted four weeks and proven more successful than they’d expected. "We’ve been doing a lot of headlining in bars and art spaces, which has turned out surprisingly okay. Usually in those situations I’m thinking, ‘Oh Jesus, people are gonna leave.’ As usual on these tours, the edges of the country are great and the middle can be a problem." Look for more local dates in the months to come.